In the Classroom: Social Studies Update
Watch what students have been doing for the past two weeks with US Census Bureau Data! To learn how the United States population expanded westward, we copied data to spreadsheets, made charts, and imported our charts into a slide presentation. Great work, students!
Students loved playing this Population Bracketology game on the US Census Bureau Website. Give it a try! Here’s a hint: Riverside California is a lot more populated than you might think!
I frequently incorporate resources from PBS Learning Media in our lessons. The students were completely engaged with this interactive lesson on Lewis and Clark. With beautiful artwork and embedded short videos from popular PBS documentaries, I was left wishing PBS could produce more of these!
To honor and celebrate Black History Month, we will continue our tradition of highlighting the accomplishments and contributions of the unsung figures in American history who aren’t household names, but should be. blackpast.org is an invaluable source for our students.
We are wrapping up the pre-civil war era the week of February 12th and we will begin studying the Civil War after winter break.
Welcome to Social Studies!
At the Accord School, our social studies curriculum operates on a three-year rotation. Regardless of grade level, all students are learning United States history and civics this year. We kicked off our US history exploration with a look at the geologic history of the North American continent from 2 billion years ago: how did these majestic mountains, great plains and delicate coastlines get here? Currently, we are studying the culture of the indigenous people who first settled in North America.
Resources
Textbook: McGraw Hill’s United States History: Voices and Perspectives Digital edition
Overview: Our online social studies textbook will be used primarily in the classroom. While students can access the textbook at home, I will not be using it for homework. This is our first year using this text at the Accord School. I selected this version primarily because of the accessibility features it offers. Students can change the reading level and text size. In addition, they can highlight text and make annotations.
Topics:
The First Americans
Exploration and Colonization
The English Colonies Are Settled and Grow
The American Revolution
First Governments and the Constitution
The Early Republic
Political and Geographic Changes
Life in the North and South
Division and Civil War
Reconstruction
The West
New Industry and a Changing Society
Expansion and War
The 1920’s and 1930’s
World War II
The Cold War
Civil Rights and American Society
America Since the 1970s
iCivics is our learning platform for civics and government instructions. “iCivics champions equitable, non-partisan civic education so that the practice of democracy is learned by each new generation. We work to inspire life-long civic engagement by providing high quality and engaging civic resources to teachers and students across our nation.” Offering games, simulations and informative content, students always look forward to our iCivics lessons.
Homework Tools
Agenda book: All students have an Accord School agenda book to bring home every night that outlines homework assignments. I assign 2-3 short homework assignments every Monday that are due Thursday morning. Students and parents report that this homework plan offers flexibility, particularly for families with busy after school schedules.
Google Classroom is our online classroom. This is where students should start their social studies homework. Students will login with their full Accord School email address and password.
IXL is a supplemental curriculum tool aligned to the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks. I will assign IXL activities for homework as needed throughout the year, particularly to review content covered in class. If students forget their username and password, they can search “IXL” in their school Gmail account for login information.
Newsela is a new tool for us this year. “Newsela content is provided at 5 reading levels, so the differentiation is built-in… teachers get everything they need to personalize lessons to each student’s need and skill level, while driving classroom discussions without leaving anyone out of the conversation.” I will assign 1-2 articles per week for homework from this site. Newsela offers both current event news articles and historical resources. The built in assessments provide reading comprehension data as well as a platform for inquiry based learning. To login at home, students only need to click “login with Google” from our Google Classroom.
I look forward to sharing more about our exciting social studies curriculum and activities at Parent Night, Monday September 25th at 7:00 p.m. See you there!